Canadian researcher Dr. Evelyn Forget says guaranteed income “works as an antidepressant.”

"Hospitalizations due to mental illness fell as much as 8.5 percent” during a UBI trial in the 70s. Today, depression rates are climbing along with inequality. The U.N. agrees that we need to focus less on chemical imbalances and more on power imbalances."

In other words, software development can be done outside a capitalist context to a much greater extent than material forms of tinkering. Coding is not an expensive hobby: only the free-time component applies. Even a fairly weak form of UBI could give a big boost to free software, because most available software (still) is not developed by businesses or for business purposes but as a hobby by hobbyists who expect nothing in exchange.

"...I've always lived cheaply. I live like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do. I can do what I think is important for me to do. It freed me to do what seemed worth doing. So make a real effort to avoid getting sucked into all the expensive lifestyle habits of typical Americans. Because if you do that, then people with the money will dictate what you do with your life. You won't be able to do what's really important to you."

@ajroach42 I read what you wrote but have not dug through all the responses, so please forgive me if I say something that's already been mentioned.

I think a lot of the problem is that the nature of the people programming computers has changed. Back in the 60s-80s, nearly everyone writing software was a tinkerer. Nowadays "programmers" are mass produced, and by and large they are neither tinkerers nor engineers; they are laborers.